Page images
PDF
EPUB

CHAPTER I.

1 The acts of Judah and Simeon. 6 Adoni-bezek justly requited. 8 Jerusalem taken. 10 Hebron taken. 13 Othniel hath Achsah to wife for taking of Debir. 16 The Kenites dwell in Judah. 17 Hormah, Gaza, Askelon, and Ekron taken. 21 The acts of Benjamin. 22 Of the house of Joseph, who take Beth-el. 27 Of Manasseh. 30 Of Zebulun. 31 Of Asher. 33 Of Naphtali. 34 Of Dan.

OW after the
death of Joshua

it came to pass,
that the child-
ren of Israel
asked the LORD,
saying, Who
shall go
go up
for us against
the Canaanites
first, to fight
against them?
2 And the
LORD said,
Judah shall go
up: behold, I

have delivered the land into his hand.

3 And Judah said unto Simeon his brother, Come up with me into my lot, that we may fight against the Canaanites; and I likewise will go with thee into thy lot. So Simeon went with him.

4 And Judah went up; and the LORD delivered the Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hand and they slew of them in Bezek ten thousand men.

5 And they found Adoni-bezek in Bezek: and they fought against him, and they slew the Canaanites and the Perizzites.

6 But Adoni-bezek fled; and they pursued after him, and caught him, and cut off his thumbs and his great toes.

7 And Adoni-bezek said, Threescore and ten kings, having 'their thumbs and their great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table: as I have done, so God hath requited me. And they brought him to Jerusalem, and there he died.

8 Now the children of Judah had fought against Jerusalem, and had taken it, and smitten it with the edge of the sword, and set the city on fire.

9 And afterward the children of Judah went down to fight against the Canaanites, that dwelt in the mountain, and in the south, and in the 'valley.

1 Heb. the thumbs of their hands and of their feet. 2 Or, gleaned. Num. 21. 3. 7 Or, he possessed the mountain.

5 Josh. 15. 13.

10 And Judah went against the Canaanites that dwelt in Hebron: (now the name of Hebron before was 'Kirjath-arba :) and they slew Sheshai, and Ahiman, and Talmai.

11 ¶ And from thence he went against the inhabitants of Debir: and the name of Debir before was Kirjath-sepher:

12 And Caleb said, He that smiteth Kirjath-sepher, and taketh it, to him will I give Achsah my daughter to wife.

13 And Othniel the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother, took it: and he gave him Achsah his daughter to wife.

14 And it came to pass, when she came to him, that she moved him to ask of her father a field and she lighted from off her ass: and Caleb said unto her, What wilt thou?

15 And she said unto him, Give me a blessing: for thou hast given me a south land; give me also springs of water. And Caleb gave her the upper springs and the nether springs.

16 And the children of the Kenite, Moses' father in law, went up out of the city of palm trees with the children of Judah into the wilderness of Judah, which lieth in the south of Arad; and they went and dwelt among the people.

17 And Judah went with Simeon his brother, and they slew the Canaanites that inhabited Zephath, and utterly destroyed it. And the name of the city was called "Hormah.

18 Also Judah took Gaza with the coast thereof, and Askelon with the coast thereof, and Ekron with the coast thereof.

19 And the LORD was with Judah; and The drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of

[graphic]

iron.

20 And they gave Hebron unto Caleb, as Moses said: and he expelled thence the three sons of Anak.

21 ¶ And the children of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites that inhabited Jerusalem but the Jebusites dwell with the children of Benjamin in Jerusalem unto this day.

22 And the house of Joseph, they also went up against Beth-el: and the LORD was with them.

23 And the house of Joseph sent to descry Beth-el. (Now the name of the city before was 'Luz.)

3 Josh. 10. 36, and 11. 21, and 15. 13.
8 Num. 14. 24. Josh. 14. 13, and 15. 13.

4 Or, low country.

9 Gen. 28. 19.

24 And the spies saw a man come forth out of the city, and they said unto him, Shew us, we pray thee, the entrance into the city, and 1owe will shew thee mercy.

25 And when he shewed them the entrance into the city, they smote the city with the edge of the sword; but they let go the man and all his family.

26 And the man went into the land of the Hittites, and built a city, and called the name thereof Luz: which is the name thereof unto this day.

[blocks in formation]

inhabitants of Kitron, nor the inhabitants of Nahalol; but the Canaanites dwelt among them, and became tributaries.

31 Neither did Asher drive out the inhabitants of Accho, nor the inhabitants of Zidon, nor of Ahlab, nor of Achzib, nor of Helbah, nor of Aphik, nor of Rehob:

32 But the Asherites dwelt among the Canaanites, the inhabitants of the land: for they did not drive them out.

33 ¶ Neither did Naphtali drive out the inhabitants of Beth-shemesh, nor the inhabitants of Beth-anath; but he dwelt among the Canaanites, the inhabitants of the land: nevertheless the inhabitants of Beth-shemesh and of Beth-anath became tributaries unto them.

34 And the Amorites forced the children of Dan into the mountain: for they would not suffer them to come down to the valley:

35 But the Amorites would dwell in mount Heres in Aijalon, and in Shaalbim: yet the hand of the house of Joseph "prevailed, so that they became tributaries.

36 And the coast of the Amorites was from "the going up to Akrabbim, from the rock, and upward.

[blocks in formation]
[ocr errors]

Verse 6. Cut off his thumbs and his great toes.'-The remarkable character of this mutilation, and its uniform infliction by Adoni-bezek himself upon his own captives, lead us to suppose that there was some ulterior object beyond mere gratuitous cruelty. Was it to disable them from acting in future in a warlike capacity? In the hands of a man without thumbs, few of the weapons of antiquity could be very effective; and the want of the great toes would be a check upon agility in flight or action. Accordingly, we read of many instances of similar mutilation, in ancient history. Thus the Athenians cut off the thumb of the right hands of the inhabitants of the island of Egina, to preclude them from managing the spear, and from disputing with themselves the empire of the sea. The disabling effect of such a mutilation, in a military point of view, appears also from the practice, among those Romans who disliked a military life, of cutting off their own thumbs, that they might render themselves incapable of serving in the army. Parents were known thus to disable their children for the same reason. This became so common a practice at last, that the senate and the emperors found it necessary to punish the act severely as a crime. Even at this day, in some of those continental states where the army is recruited by a compulsory conscription, men are occasionally known to cut off the thumb of the right hand, to prevent their being called to a service they dislike; and even soldiers in the army do the same, to ensure their discharge. It has therefore been necessary to render such an act a punishable offence. A trace of this practice exists in the word poltron, which we and the French have adopted from the Italian, which, while it immediately denotes, as with us, a dastardly soldier who shrinks from his duty, etymologically signifies cut-thumb,' being formed from pollice, 'thumb,' and tronco, cut off, maimed.' As to the loss of the great toes-independently of the inconvenience occasioned in the act of walking or running, the disabling effect to an Oriental is infinitely greater than to a European. The

feet and toes are much employed in almost all handicraft operations throughout the East, and in many cases the loss of the great toes would completely disqualify a man from earning his subsistence. Besides the many little active operations which they are tutored to execute, the artisans, as they work with their hands, seated on the ground, hold fast and manage all their work with their feet and toes, in which the great toes have a very prominent duty to perform.

7. Threescore and ten kings.'-This extraordinary number of kings will not surprise the attentive reader of Scripture, or of ancient history in general. The sacred history concurs with the profane in shewing that the earliest sovereignties were of exceedingly confined extent, often consisting of no more than a single town, with a small surrounding district. In the time of Abraham there were not fewer than five kings in the vale of Sodom; that is, a king to every city that is mentioned: and in Joshua xii. there is a list of thirty-one kings, whom the hero of that name overthrew in the small country of Canaan; and now we come to a conqueror who, probably within the bounds of no very extensive territory, had overcome no less than seventy kings. Small states of this sort have existed in the early period of almost every nation, and their history has been everywhere the same. One or more of such states acquired, in the course of time, such predominance as enabled it to absorb the others gradually into its own body; or else foreign invaders conquered the several states in detail, and formed them into one kingdom. This has been the usual process by which large states were originally formed, wherever we find them existing. Egypt itself was at first divided into several states. So, in China and Japan, the several provinces into which we see those nations divided, were anciently so many independent sovereignties. It was the same in ancient Greece; and, in reading the Iliad of Homer, the modern reader is astonished at the vast number of kings sent by Greece and its islands to

the Trojan war; which renders it evident that this small region was at least not inferior to Canaan in the number of the little principalities into which it was divided. But we need not go out of our own country for examples. We may conceive the number of kingdoms into which this island was divided, from the fact, mentioned by Cæsar, that there were four kings in the single county of Kent. The Silures, the Brigantes, and other small tribes, among whom the country was portioned, had each their own king. The Saxons did things on a large scale, when they divided the country into so few as seven kingdoms. In the time of the Romans, Gaul, Spain, and Germany were, in like manner, cut up into a countless number of small states and kingdoms. In more modern times, and even in our own, we see a similar state of things subsisting in Africa, America, and part of Asia, where we encounter a great number of sovereigns, or independent states, in a small extent of country; each canton having its own king.

As I have done, so God hath requited me.'-Had no further explanation been given, the act of the Hebrew victors, in cutting off the thumbs and great toes of their royal captive, would have been cited (as other acts not similarly explained have been) as a deed of motiveless and savage barbarity, attesting the innate cruelty of their nature. But when the person thus treated himself lets us know that he regards it as an act of retributive justice,—and when, thus himself mutilated, the bitter remembrance comes before him of the threescore and ten kings who were similarly dealt with by him, and whom, with barbaric pride, he kept to gather their meat under his table,-the case as regards the Israelites is greatly altered. So far from being a barbarity of their own invention, gratuitous and uncalled for, they depart from their ordinary practice to render it an act of retributive justice, and thereby expressed in no equivocal terms their detestation of the manner in which this tyrannical king had been wont to treat the illustrious persons who became captive to him.

In speaking about contemporary usages, however, it will be necessary to guard against one dangerous source of misconception. Except with reference to the times in which we ourselves live, we are in the habit of practically forgetting that contemporary nations are not necessarily in the same state of civilization; and there are classes of usages, especially such as are connected with war, which, as existing in any one nation, will be much better illustrated, or rather estimated, by the practices of any other nations in a similar state with respect to civilization, in whatever age existing, than by references to the usages of contemporary or even neighbouring nations. The diminution of the barbarities of war which advancing civilization produces, is perhaps less the effect of humane feeling than of the interested considerations which civilization evolves. The barbarian has no interest in being merciful, and therefore-unless by a fortunate accident-he has no mercy. His war is one of extermination. His object is to injure or disable the enemy as much as possible, and he knows no way of doing this but by destroying as many as possible of their number. His glory is to accumulate the mortal trophies of those he has slain. He gives no quarter, nor expects to receive any; and if he does take prisoners, it is only that they may in some future day of triumphant festival taste with tenfold intensity all the bitterness of death.' The reason of this is, that he has no use for their lives; and the only motive which prevents him from destroying them on the spot is-that he may devour them at leisure, or that he may offer them in sacrifice to his grim idols.

Then, as a nation becomes settled, it finds that the labour of a man has such value as to make his life worth preserving. The captives are therefore spared to labour as slaves. Under this state of things, however, interest will suggest the advantage of allowing the captive to be ransomed by his friends, if communications can be opened with them, and if the sum which they can offer exceeds the value which the captor sets upon his services. A savage could not preserve his prisoner without encumbering himself with the charge of his subsistence, and he will

only spare his life when there are facilities for making a profit of him by selling him to those by whom his services may be needed, or when there is some equivalent prospect of valuable ransom. Under this state of things, captive kings and chiefs are generally exposed to a peculiar treatment, by reason of the active and leading part which their position had obliged them to take against their present conquerors. Sometimes we shall find that they are put to death, and that in cold blood, and with circumstances of ignominy, weeks or months after the conflict has been decided. Oftener they are subjected to some mutilation, and are obliged to render menial and ignominious services to their conqueror.

In a still more improved condition of society, where the disadvantages of an act of warfare are generally less unequal than in the savage or semi-civilized conditions, prisoners are taken on both sides; and as both consider that the presence of their own citizens and soldiers is of more advantage than the services of foreign slaves, an exchange of prisoners is the result. If, under these circumstances, a king or chief person should become a prisoner, he obtains his liberty either for a high ransom, or by exchange against one or more persons of the highest rank, or by the cession of some advantage to the captors. The highest state of civilization possible while war exists, seems to be indicated by the liberation of officers (even of high rank) acting under orders, upon their parole engagement, not again during the war to fight against their captors.

The condition of society, as indicated by war, described in this last paragraph, is not to be found in any ancient nation, although parts of it might be occasionally brought out by some concurrence of circumstances.

We have entered into this statement because the true question as to the war practices of the Hebrews is nothing more or less than this,-Whether their practices in war did or did not correspond with the progressive developments of their national condition? not,-Whether in the first stage of their social progression they had the war usages which are found only in the last?

Now, in answer to this question, we have not the least hesitation in declaring our conviction that the practices of the Hebrews, as regards the treatment of prisoners, were not only not worse, but not nearly as bad as those of other nations in the same state of civilization. It would be almost unnecessary to state that in the long period over which the history of the Hebrew people extends, they passed through various states of civilization; that their social condition was progressive, like that of all other nations; and that, as time passed, many old customs were relinquished, and many new ones came into use.

During the time in which the Hebrews were engaged in the conquest of Canaan, and were well settled in that country—that is, down to the time of King David—they were in a condition very similar, as respects war, to that which we have firstly described, while the settled nations around them were for the most part in that condition which has been secondly indicated. And yet it will be found that during this period the usages of the Hebrews were far above those of the first condition; but were in many respects equal to, and in some respects above those of the second condition-and this through the correctives which their religious system applied to the principles of warfare which naturally belonged to their condition.

During the period of which we now write, the Hebrews had no interest in preserving the lives of their prisoners. The conquest of the country being incomplete, they were themselves rather pressed at times for room; and their operations in agriculture and pasturage were of too contracted and simple a description to need more hands than every family with its natural dependants afforded. There was no market open to them in which they could sell their prisoners for slaves, had they been so inclined. And as the nations with whom they warred were their near neighbours, they could not employ them with any profit to themselves without affording them the means of escape. In short, it was impossible that they could have kept them without incurring the cost of their maintenance, which no ancient

nation ever did. Under such circumstances no prisoners were taken. Those who could, escaped; and those who could not, were slain either on the field of battle or in the pursuit. In fact there were no surrenders or capitulations of bodies of men, no laying down of arms, by which prisoners are obtained in modern warfare. No prisoners were ever reserved to be tortured and slain in cold blood on some future occasion. It is true that one or two instances of prisoners being put to death after the act of warfare, do occur-such as that of the Midianites (Num. xxxi. 13-17) and of king Agag (1 Sam. xv. 32, 33): but these were not preserved with the view of their being subsequently destroyed; but they were put to death because they had without authority been spared by the military commanders, although the nation had before the battle devoted them, by a solemn and irrevocable ban, to destruction. In the case of those kings who were taken in the course of the battle, and were put to death on the same day, at its close, this cannot be called cold blooded. It was a crowning act of triumph and vengeance, while the blood of the victors, maddened by the recent conflict, still boiled in their veins. At the worst, this was the most barbarous practice of the Hebrews in their most barbarous state; and was of far less atrocity than the acts towards their distinguished prisoners of nations far in advance of the Israelites of these times in general civilization--if indeed there be any true civilization by which the heart is not civilized. Thus the heathen attributed, to some extent, the victories which they achieved to the might and blessing of their gods: therefore, in acknowledging the obligation to these gods, prisoners were, by some of them, preserved to be offered to these gods in sacrifice, on some high holiday; but from this, and from a hundred other barbarities connected with or arising out of this form of acknowledgment, the Hebrews were precluded by the strict prohibition of human sacrifices, as a thing most abhorrent to Jehovah. Yet no nation was more perseveringly taught than the Hebrews that the glory of all their victories was to be ascribed to their Divine King; and this made the agents of these victories, the generals, judges, and kings, heedful that they might not seem to take too large a share of the glory to themselves, by ostentatious exhibitions of their triumphs. No royal and noble captives were dragged in chains at their chariot wheels; none were allowed to live on, to be paraded in distant cities to mark the triumph of the conqueror, and afterwards ignominiously slain; none were ever blinded or mutilated by them, or exposed to mockery and insult; nor were any ever kept by them to grind in the prison-house, or to gather meat under their tables: not even Solomon in all his glory entertained the vulgar ambition of having dethroned kings among the menials of his house; and if kings' daughters were among the honourable women' (see Ps. xlv. 9; attributed to Solomon) of his Egyptian spouse, they were given to her by her father rather than her husband; and, after all; they were 'honourable (not degraded) women.' The custom among the Hebrews of slaying the kings of a conquered people upon the field of battle was, after all, of only momentary duration. It had already so far declined in the time of Gideon, that he would have spared Zeba and Zalmunna had not they, by putting his brothers to death, rendered the case one of blood-revenge. And although Agag was put to death at a much later period, that was a peculiar case, to which we have already adverted. And after having relinquished this practice, they resorted to none of these intermediate barbarities of which we have spoken. Captive kings came to be treated with consideration and even kindness; and for the most part, when not slain in battle, were continued in the rule of their territories on the condition of paying tribute. The Hebrews also, within as short or a shorter time than any other people, ceased to wage exterminative wars. With an enlarged territory and increased means of employment, it became their interest to take and preserve captives for the sake of the services which they might render in the public works and in the fields. There may be exceptions, and examples of gratuitous barbarities; but what history is there, even modern history, in which such do not occur?

That the Egyptians were, at this period, very far above the Hebrews in all the arts of civil life, it would be very useless to dissemble or dispute. It has therefore occurred to us that we cannot better conclude this note than by shewing that in this comparatively advanced state of that people, when captive labour had become valuable to them, they still retained barbarous war-usages which were not known to the Hebrews in their most barbarous state, much less in that more civilized condition which they afterwards attained. The illustration derivable from this source is the more important, inasmuch as, from their long residence in Egypt, they could hardly be unacquainted with the warusages of that country, and the difference cannot well be accounted for but by reference to the different circumstances in which they were placed, and the entirely different principles of their religion and government.

An admirable representation of a battle-field is found on the walls of the pronaos of the great temple at Medinet Habou, and is thus described by Dr. Richardson:- The south and part of the east wall is covered with a battlescene, and the cruel punishment of the vanquished, by cutting off their hands and maiming their bodies, which

SCRIBE COUNTING HANDS (CUT OFF).

is performed in the presence of the chief, who has seated himself in repose on the back part of his chariot to witness the execution of his horrid sentence. Three heaps of amputated hands are counted over before him, and an equal number of scribes with scrolls in their hands are minuting down the account. As many rows of prisoners stand behind, to undergo a similar mutilation in their turn; their hands are tied behind their backs, or lashed over their heads, or thrust into eye-shaped manacles; some of their heads are twisted completely round, some of them are turned back to back, and their arms lashed together round the elbows; and thus they are marched up to punishment.' Now we are prepared to admit that Richardson has here taken rather too strong a view of the case. We believe with Wilkinson that the heaps of hands, tongues, and other members, counted by the scribes in the presence of the king, are taken from the slain enemies, whose numbers they serve to authenticate. However, the particular manner in which the dead are mutilated for this purpose does not say much for the humanity of idea among the Egyptians. There was no such practice among the Hebrews; and the not remarkably humane nation (the Turks), which has retained to our own day an analogous practice, does not go further than to cut off the right ears of the slain. The strained and torturing postures, painful to behold, in which the prisoners are bound, seems to us, as it does to Richardson, a very unequivocal intimation of the inhuman manner in which the Eyptians treated their captives. Wilkinson allows that, To judge from the mode of binding their prisoners, we might suppose they treated them with unnecessary harshness, and even cruelty, at the moment of their capture and during their march

[graphic][subsumed][merged small][merged small]

with the army' (Ancient Egyptians, i. 396). He also admits that the Egyptian hatred of foreigners might often lead the soldiers to commit acts of brutal severity, but excuses them by reference to the incidental brutalities of the arinies of civilized Europe. This excuse is as good for the Hebrews, and even better, as they were a less civilized' people. But, in fact, the brutalities of the Egyptians were not incidents but usages. Nations do not perpetuate in marble the memory of incidental barbarities which they deplore; and that the Egyptians delighted in images of human suffering and of tyrannic power over strangers, is proved by the multiplication of such images in every possible form,-not only in sculpture and painting, but as figured on their official dresses, and wrought in their ornamental furniture. Scenes of immolation figure on their thrones; and their more splendid chairs present, as supporters of the seat, the gilt or golden images of captives, bound in the most painful postures, with ropes around their necks. To the thinking mind this last circumstance will appear much more conclusive than many facts of much greater intrinsic importance. The return after victory is represented in the continuation of the same historical piece to which the preceding observations refer:-"The king returning victorious to Egypt, proceeds slowly in his car, conducting in triumph the prisoners he has made, who walk (bound as above) beside and before it, three others being bound to the axle..... He arrives at Thebes, and presents his captives to Amunre and Maut, the deities of the city, who compliment him, as usual, on the victory he has gained, and the overthrow of the enemy he has "trampled beneath his feet" (Egypt and Thebes, 67). The victorious king trampling upon the bodies of his conquered foes frequently occurs in such scenes; and so fond were the Egyptians of the ideas and images connected with this act, that they were wont to have the figure of a slave or captive wrought upon their sandals, that they might thus tread it under feet. Sandals thus figured have been found. In some cases the king or chief alights from his chariot to bind with his own hand the chiefs he has conquered; and in others he holds himself the end of the rope around their necks whereby they are led, or rather driven, before his chariot in his triumphal march.

As a conclusion to the whole of these scenes, the hero slays with his club, in the presence of his gods, the principal captives who have fallen into his hands. That the mode of representation is in some respects symbolical, or rather conventional, must be admitted. For as the artists wanted space or ingenuity to intimate the number slain before the gods in any other manner, the captives are represented as bound together in one mass, all on their knees, with hands uplifted towards the inexorable hero, who, represented in colossal proportions, stands over them, grasping in one hand their united hair, while the other wields the uplifted club or battle-axe with which he seems about to demolish them all with one blow. Scenes of this sort are repeated in every possible form.

IMMOLATION OF CAPTIVES.

Endeavours have of course been made to explain away

the obvious meaning of these groups. Mr. Hamilton thinks

« PreviousContinue »